I love quotes or excerpts from writings, speech, film, music or conversations that makes me think differently or more deeply. Quotes like these guide and inspire me. The following are a small selection of those that are impactful for me. Perhaps there is something here you will find useful.
“Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there”.
Rumi, 11th Century Theologian and Poet
“It’s amazing what you can achieve if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
Harry S. Truman
“We don’t have to see to believe. We believe, and then we see.”
Grace Ji-Sun Kim
“I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
Anne Lamott
“You will not save what you do not love.”
Rabbi Dean Shapiro
“Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.”
Jane Goodall
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Albert Einstein
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lighting and lighting bug.”
Mark Twain
In a TED talk which asks the question, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”, Ken Robinson tells the following story he heard, “A teacher walked up to a little girl drawing a picture. The teacher asked what the girl was drawing and she said it was a picture of God. The teacher said that no one knows what God looks like. The girl said that they will in a minute.”
Sir Ken Robinson
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
Meister Eckhart
“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
G.K. Chesterton
“Faith is, in its very nature, the acceptance of what our reason cannot reach.”
John Henry Newman
“Reverence for creation comes easily for most people. Reverence for other people is much more of a challenge.”
Barbara Brown Taylor
“Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it’s not a problem to you personally.”
Unknown
“Activism is my rent for living on this planet.”
Alice Walker
“We are Earth people on a journey to the stars. Our quest, our Earth walk, is to look within, to know who we are, to see that we are connected to all things, that there is no separation.”
Quote is attributed to “Lakota” but with no further information
“Wouldn’t it be great to celebrate justice and not have to advocate for it.”
Fr. Gregory Boyle
“The only real service project is the one where you can’t determine who is the service provider and who is the recipient.”
Fr. Gregory Boyle
“Trips to the backcountry are like receiving direction from an old teacher. I discover the holy in the smell of the pine needles and dread of a gathering storm.”
Belden C. Lane
“Christ is not found in loud and pompous declarations, but in humble and fraternal dialogue.”
Thomas Merton
In a discussion about the existence of doubt in the faith life of many people, my pastor said that one of his favorite passages was Mark 9:24, “I believe. Help my unbelief.” He then told a story of a young mother that in a moment of feeling overwhelmed by the circumstances of life said, “God, I don’t believe in you, but I have no where else to turn.”
2016 bible study with Dr. R. Glen Miles
“What we being, others who come after will complete. The good is like the building of cathedrals. Only through faith can those who lay foundation stones hear bells ringing in unraised steeples.”
George Hamilton Combs
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Reinhold Niebuhr
“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”
Reinhold Niebuhr
“Silence and God will be experienced simultaneously – and even as the same thing.”
Richard Rohr
“Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it’s a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on alters.”
Barbara Brown Taylor
CRAIG STEPHEN DOTY 